Coffee Tales

Coffee…..the very word makes me cringe!

Don’t ask me why or how, but the fact remains that I have never liked coffee, especially the filter coffee they make at my place – in true tam-bram style.

My grandmother recalls the days when she as a young bride, had to wake up early to brew the ‘decoction’ for the entire household (consisting of parents-in-law, husband and 4 brothers-in-law). It was the job of the mother-in-law and with the arrival of the eldest daughter-in-law in the house, the job was entrusted to her.

Coming back to the coffee preparation part, my grandmother would boil the water, put the freshly ground coffee powder in the coffee filter, sprinkle some cold water over the powder, pour hot water over the powder to let it flow down in a thick concentrated form. The thick coffee decoction would go down the filter in about 20 ~ 30 minutes. Then it would be mixed with varying proportions of boiling hot milk and sugar (depending on how strong the person wanted his/her coffee to be).

Off it would be poured into the coffee glasses of each male member of the family who would be out in the verandah reading the newspaper and discussing the day to day affairs of the town and shooing away the flies with their cotton towels waiting for their early morning dose of coffee!

(I am also informed that as the aroma of the coffee would spread to the household in the early hours of the morning, the male members would be salivating at the mere thought of the piping hot coffee being prepared and eagerly wait for their morning cuppa!!)

Also, the coffee had to be served to all the males and other elders of the family at just the right temperature (read : just after removing from the stove). I find it incredible that one can gulp down the piping hot coffee when my few attempts at drinking a hot glass of milk or tea burns my tongue.

My grandmom recounts as to how she would first fill all the glasses with decoction, add sugar as per the individual’s requirements, remove the boiling milk from the stove, add milk to the glasses, mix it well in the “davara” (small cup) so the froth sits on top of the glass. Nothing would distract her while she was going about doing this in that precise order as that was the only way she could satisfy 5-7 people’s yen for early morning hot coffee!

I quiz her about her cup and then she makes her startling revelation – she does not like coffee at all. Hence she has her cup of hot milk after serving coffee to the household. She further adds that she has neither liked the taste nor smell (okay - aroma for the coffee fans!) of coffee. And so it has been for the last 60 + years.

Similarly my mother also never used to drink coffee and I suspect it passed over to me and has something to do with my drinking lot of milk and tea to this day. In fact the only kind of coffee I have once in a while is flavoured cold coffee, usually coconut, where the flavour of the coconut absorbs the coffee taste. So much so that while I enjoy the drink, my coffee buddies are appalled at my enjoyment and delight of something that is so ‘not-coffee’!

So it was with a fair amount of surprise that I noted the latest conquest of coffee.

Yes, imagine one morning when I notice my grandmother with a hot cup of coffee by her side, I am about to ask her if she would want me to call my father or brother to take their cup, when she just gulps down the coffee!

I am perplexed at this sight and immediately quiz her : how come she is drinking coffee ?

She gives me a wide smile and replies casually that she has taken to drinking coffee of late as she started liking it and now craves for her two cups of coffee per day. It’s what gets her going, she adds! How come she never had it all this while, while she was in the joint family or thereafter with my grandfather, I ask, not wanting to give up easily. Totally unperturbed, she mentions she drank a small portion some days back which my brother (a die-hard coffee addict) had kept aside and from then, it got her hooked! She realised that she really enjoyed it!

I am totally confounded by this rather candid admission. All I can do is marvel at the adding numbers to the coffee world!

No wonder more coffee shops open up in every part of the city. Café Coffee day is on an expansion spree globally after painting Bengalooru and other cities red - Sorry, this is not your brand of red, Mr. Karat and Mr.Yechury! Nevertheless it is a ‘C’ revolution of a different kind, taking hold of the masses in a way the other ‘C’ could not!

While writing this post, I just googled the word “Coffee” – it throws up a whopping 215,000,000 results as against 166,000,000 results for “Tea”!

On a recent visit to the US, I met an acquaintance at the ubiquitous Starbucks café in one of the malls there. We walk up to the counter and he orders a hot espresso in a jiffy. Meanwhile, I am looking at the menu and searching for something besides coffee. It apparently surprises him that I take this long to order a coffee at Starbucks. Finally, as I order for my “chai”, he gives me a weird look and informs me that I must be mad to come to a Starbucks café and not drink coffee!

Well, some things in life are best left unexplained! :)